Vulnerability
by TheTruthBetween
Summary: It takes him a while to catch on, and if it was something she was apt to take lightly, she'd tease him about that, make a snarky, biting comment about his years with Snow draining his intelligence. As it is, she just looks at him with vulnerable eyes as denials pour from her lips, and he reminds her of an important fact that she's overlooking: she can trust him.


_Contains kinda-sorta-a-little-but-not-really infantilism. (OMG please don't judge it for that, give it a chance.)_

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It takes him a while to catch on, and if it was something she was apt to take lightly, she'd tease him about that, make a snarky, biting comment about his years with Snow draining his intelligence. As it is, she just looks at him with vulnerable eyes as denials pour from her lips, and he reminds her of an important fact that she's overlooking: she can trust him. And if she needs, or even simply wants, something that is within his power to give her, he will.

This is certainly within his power.

And as she calms in his arms, slowly conceding that _perhaps_ this is something she _might_ consider, he thinks back to all the signs of her need.

All the times she would playfully bite his fingertip, then pull the digit between her lips, her eyes closing happily as she gently sucked, before turning the action into something designed to tease and distract. The way she would shiver and relax when he would slide his thumb past her lips as he moved within her.

And the most obvious of signs (he kicked himself again for not cluing in earlier), the way he would wake up with her lips gently wrapped around his penis. It never happened when he woke up hard, morning wood tenting the sheets or pressed against her backside. It was only the mornings when he would wake soft, wrapped in the comforting wet warmth of her mouth, her breathing slow through her nose and softly rustling his pubic hair.

He could never miss the flash of disappointment in her eyes at his arrival to consciousness; he'd simply never thought that it was another other than her being unhappy at not getting further before he woke, as she would start to flick her tongue against him, lips moving to bring him to hardness.

What finally made him catch on was the way she would sometimes curl loosely between his legs as he leaned against the headboard, watching her with eyes heavy from two orgasms. The first few times, she'd made a teasing comment about "cleaning him off" after he was spent, but he had noticed she never did so if he'd only come once. Her mouth would get him hard again, which, he'd since realized, was not her intent.

It was only once he was completely spent that she would move her mouth over him gently, waiting until the over-stimulated nerves had calmed before taking him in her mouth. And hold him there. Then she would relax, becoming a boneless puddle between his legs, content.

When he thought about it, it made sense. She had never had true security, shuffled from an abusive mother to an unloving husband to a manipulative imp. He doubted she'd had any real safety since she was a baby at her wet nurse's teat.

So it stood to reason that she would come to need this, particularly when she was at her most vulnerable. And he knew that he made her vulnerable. She was unused to love and often didn't know how to handle it. So she regressed. And she took the comforting presence of something in her mouth where she could find it.

And now that he knows, he realizes, he can help her. He can give her what she needs. So he holds her close to him and kisses her lightly before cupping her cheek with one hand and brushing his thumb over her lips. He uses his eyes to convey all the love and safety he can.

When she parts her lips and draws his thumb in, suckling it gently, she looks up at him, her own eyes warm with gratitude. Then she closes them, and he watches over her as she relaxes and slowly drifts to sleep.

Yes, it took him a while to catch on, and for that he will continue to berate himself. But he will do everything in his power to make her feel safe, and now that he knows what that entails, it only makes him love her more, for she has trusted him with her vulnerability and that is the greatest gift she could have given him.

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_Okay, so I'm SUPER SUPER nervous about posting this. Please keep that in mind and go easy on me. This is also the first time I've written a story with this subject matter, AND the first Evil Charming fic I've written._


End file.
